The Lost City and the Last City

Our story opens in a garden and ends in a city.

Garden—Eden.

City—The New Jerusalem, the Holy City of God.

In the Garden of Eden, there was responsibility, relationship, and beauty.

But there was an interloper that came into the Garden of Eden, coming in with doubt about God's character and something enticing and tempting, fracturing the best part of the Garden: man and woman walked with God. That's what made paradise, paradise. The creator and the created walked together in relationship. Your primary purpose is to walk with your creator.

There was a great divorce in the Garden, but God was good, and He made it possible for us to find our way back to Him. But the consequences of the fracture are still in the Garden, and we are not in paradise anymore. But there is a new city coming.

The Great City (Babylon) is the construct of sin that fractures our relationship with God.

We aren't against the city. There is allure and opportunity. But in the physical city, there is abandonment, corruption, and darkness. There is a concentration of good and bad things.

There are undercurrents of "The Great City." There are injustices, a value of things, progress over human beings, and freedom. The Great City is about deception and darkness.

The Great City is very alluring and can take us all out.

If we've set our gaze on Babylon, we're falling with it. You will collapse from within. So what do we do today?

We come out of Babylon.

We don't escape, but we engage, living in the city instead of being of the city.

1.    Enjoy the best of the city.

2.    Transform the worst of the city.

3.    Long for the last city.

The city needs us—it needs salt, light, change, and love. We don't just come inside the church; we go outside its walls and invest in it.

We remember that the highest beauty of the Garden, where our story began, is the same highest beauty in the city where our story will end. And that is that we will be with God.

Heaven is not about getting out of The Great City. Heaven is being with God.

There is beauty all around us in the city, but we must fall in love with Jesus all over again to escape Babylon.